Traffic and strategies
The Spa-Francorchamps Sprint race, which started late due to the relentless bad weather – a common occurrence in this area of the Ardennes – and was reduced from 15 to 11 total laps, once again did not smile upon Charles Leclerc. The Monegasque Scuderia Ferrari driver finished in fifth position, just behind his Maranello teammate Carlos Sainz, after starting fourth on the grid alongside the other SF-23 car.
Charles Leclerc’s #16 car had a few moments of brilliance on the track and a couple of decisive incidents that were not within his control. The second incident, which secured his final fifth place, was the Lewis Hamilton – Sergio Perez collision, resulting in the Mexican’s retirement and the British champion’s penalty.
But why did Charles Leclerc end up behind these two drivers, who started behind him at the beginning? It all came down to the pit stop they were forced to make, switching from wet to intermediate tires. Finding himself behind Carlos Sainz at the time of the rolling start, the Monegasque driver had to wait for his teammate’s decision. Understandably, the Spaniard opted for an immediate pit stop, and so Charles Leclerc had to complete one more lap on the extreme wet tires. This ruined the plans of the ’97 class driver, who was then further slowed down by a pit stop that took too long.
“We need to maximize”
“Unfortunately, the pit stops compromised this race,” emphasized the poleman of tomorrow’s Belgian Grand Prix in an interview for Sky Sport F1 following the Spa Sprint event. “Carlos was ahead and had the priority to choose whether to go to the pits, so I was a bit at the mercy of that. I did one more lap with the wet tires, which wasn’t the optimal solution at that moment, but we couldn’t do anything else. Unfortunately, we also had a problem at the pit stop, although I haven’t yet understood what happened, and that cost us two or three positions.” – the Monegasque driver explained.
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“It wasn’t a Sprint where we maximized everything,” Charles Leclerc bitterly concluded, “and we’ll have to work on that, to at least optimize our result when we don’t have the best pace available. Tomorrow? It becomes difficult to imagine what will happen – the final comment from the idol of the Ferrari fans – because here, when you expect dry weather, it rains, and vice versa.” – the Ferrari man concluded.
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